Sorry to disappoint you but no... Just numbers, sexy huh?[emoji1] Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk
Of course that goes online is infinitely better to run offline, but not everyone can be running online, for various reasons, and woe to the rF2 presents a great challenge for those who run offline.
Nope. A train will only go where the person in control of the lines chooses. We save ourselves from this, and save you money therefore, by having a plugin system that exports everything a third-party would need for a great many things. There are 2-3 very nice offline champ plugins, better than rF1 in-sim championship was.
That's interesting. Now the big question is, can the flow be reversed? I mean use input data to set many things like AI strength (otherwise you would have the vanilla behavior where it cannot be more random than how it is currently), cars reliability (what is the point of a called simulator where all cars are perfect?!), tire stint conditions (what is the point of having always perfect tires that are not chained among sessions???) and so on so forth. Obviously i'm pointing out the fact that it is not only a matter of provide output data, but also of provide input data to set many aspect of the race (that's what a mod friendly software does, otherwise it is not fully moddable). Otherwise, all you provide is not different than write some names and numbers on a spreadsheet.
What williang83 pointed out is the core of the problem with offline races in rF2 right now. I already passed my proposals to ISI about this some time ago. We need to be able to: 1. Create AI drivers (name, abilities). This already is possible with .rcd files, but can be extended. 2. Before going on track, select drivers from user created list and assign this drivers to cars and skins that we select. 3. Also assigning setup file to AI driver, his race strategy, including starting fuel, starting tire compounds, forcing pit-stop AI events (lap_num, fuel, tire compound), forcing retire events (engine blow up on lap X, etc...). In this way whole seasons can be simulated. This could be implemented, for example, by: 1. Extending plugin interface to start working before going on track. Implementing all the features I described. So we could write plugins for offline races/seasons ourselves. - or - 2. Creating some kind of user editable ini or json file which will go into track folder and will describe all needed parameters to start offline race with "programmable" AI. rF2 will use them like it uses .rcd files right now. We could write UI software to generate this ini/json files ourselves.
You can do 2 of those already: 1) In Game with AI Edit/Create function also use your own Skins 2) Granted you can't do that before loading the track, but chose the Cars you want and use 0 AI. When on Track you then pick the AI Drivers you would like or just made up. 3) Setup files for AI drivers have been available since forever and more recently added In Game too, but I agree being able to better set them a Race Strategy (fuel/tires etc) would be a very nice feature. Even if it's just a random figure plucked from mid air and given to the AI, at least they'd be showing more Human like decisions at times. Of course "forcing AI pit stops" is a achievable via Fuel & Tire Wear multipliers which works just fine in some cases, but it's not always the ideal way.
If I`m not mistaken, its only possible to create AI if you have new skin. If I just want to create AI driver and put him in some existing car and then later in other mod/car - its not possible.
It is possible, when you are in the tuning options and create a new folder from a existing car, the game creates an alternative skin from the same car and you can choose the alt.dds skin file like a skin but its the same. When you selected the alt.dds skin in the showroom you can create your own virtual driver with name and team name and also edit the values of the driver ingame with the ai edit button.
About the pit stop I'm satisfied, I think I leave laid down a strategy for the AI takes a bit of grace, of surprise, of the opponent's tactics. When do online racing, see happen as in real racing, where cars that are further back, tend to stop first and the first stop for last. Even when it comes to yellow flag full, cars don't stop all together, it's nice to see. Now run knowing that on back X pilots will stop, gets so predictable as the current F1, where Pirelli says before you start the GP weekend, what are the strategies that can be traced by the teams, what's the point?
